Boris Abbott Jacobsohn (July 30, 1918, New York City – December 26, 1966) was an American physicist, known for his contributions to the study of

muonic atom A muon ( ; from the Greek letter mu (μ) used to represent it) is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with an electric charge of −1 '' e'' and a spin of , but with a much greater mass. It is classified as a lepton. As wi ...

s. Jacobsohn graduated from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

with B.S. in 1938 and M.S in 1939. At the beginning of the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

, he worked with

Enrico Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and ...

at Columbia. Jacobsohn, along with his wife Ruth, moved with Fermi's team in early 1942 to the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

for the team's relocation to the

Metallurgical Laboratory The Metallurgical Laboratory (or Met Lab) was a scientific laboratory at the University of Chicago that was established in February 1942 to study and use the newly discovered chemical element plutonium. It researched plutonium's chemistry and m ...

, where he worked until the end of WWII. In late 1945,

Edward Teller Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care fo ...

invited

Maria Goeppert-Mayer Maria Goeppert Mayer (; June 28, 1906 – February 20, 1972) was a German-born American theoretical physicist, and Nobel laureate in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Pri ...

, along with her two students Boris Jacobsohn and Harris Mayer, to Los Alamos to work on the development of the

thermonuclear bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...

. For this work, Jacobsohn received, in 1947 after declassification of the research, his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago with thesis under the supervision of Edward Teller. For the academic year 1947–1948, Jacobsohn was an instructor at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. In 1948 he became an assistant professor in the physics department of the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

. There he was appointed a full professor in 1959 and remained until he died of a heart attack on a skiing vacation. In 1961 Jacobsohn was elected a Fellow of the

American Institute of Physics The American Institute of Physics (AIP) promotes science and the profession of physics, publishes physics journals, and produces publications for scientific and engineering societies. The AIP is made up of various member societies. Its corpora ...

. After his death, a fund was established to annually bring a distinguished physicist, elected by vote of the graduate students in the physics department, to the University of Washington as Boris A. Jacobsohn Memorial Lecturer.

References

1918 births 1966 deaths 20th-century American physicists Columbia College (New York) alumni University of Chicago alumni University of Washington faculty Manhattan Project people Place of death missing {{US-physicist-stub